“This is the heart of the fortress. It is here that you will all be gathered in times of greatest need.”
Victor Felix’s translator traversed the stage, passing in front of the three masters, who listened with folded arms. Like him they were dressed in a simple cloak with a hood that covered a long black tunic.
In front of them, down five steps in a large square covered by an alabaster dome, were the students.
“This praetorium is not only a place – it is above all a symbol.” He spread his arms in a semicircle, and an optical illusion made it seem as though his fingers might touch the heads of the children watching him. Behind them waved the banners of the legion, proclaiming the
battle cry for which they had been training for two long years. “Vigiles in tenebris,” he said.
“Watching in the darkness. And from today this will be your task, because today you become the priests of the legion.”
The children who crowded the praetorium raised their hands to the sky and applauded until Felix’s servant managed to calm them again. He turned around and nodded to the first of the masters and the man raised his hands to his hood and uncovered his head. Two feline eyes darted quickly among those who had been all his pupils until the day before. “You will often be asked: ‘Why?’ They will ask you what prompted you to stay in the shadow of the eagle of the Empire. The same eagle that observed in silence while your lands were ravished, while that which you loved was killed, while your hopes were burned. You will answer simply: ‘Because the gods willed it thus.’“
The second priest stepped forward while the other retreated, hiding his features under his hood. He was a little taller than the first man and decidedly thinner. Large brown eyes confirmed his Middle Eastern origins. “You have been chosen, you have been saved from slavery, from suffering, from death, because your task is to dispense divine justice on earth. And this justice cannot be carried out exclusively through submission, because man must be aware of the fullness of divine power over the person.”
The third master did not move. When the second stopped talking, his hands remained at his sides without showing his face, which was still protected by the hood, “You have learned,” he said in a deep voice with a Dacian accent, “that pietas, piety, requires the respect and fulfilment of religious duties towards the gods and towards the ancestors. You have learned that virtus, virtue, is the dedication of one’s person to the ideals and traditions of Rome and to the common good of Rome. But, above all, you have learned that you are the sole custodians of this truth.”
The slave waited until the last echo of the three masters’ words had died away. He lowered his hood and loosened the fibula of the mantle. An anatomical bronze cuirass and the sparkle of armillae greeted the students.
“From pietas and from virtus comes iustitia – justice – which is the only true measure of the sanctity of your deeds. A just fight for a just cause. Some will dare to tell you that there are many just causes and that some seemingly unjust causes are actually just. Do not believe it. The only just cause for which you will be called to fight,” he concluded, “Is that of the Imperium. The harmony between men and gods.”
Before he stepped down from the platform, he noticed that the prefect Felix was watching him from the back, behind the masters. The two exchanged a nod. “And now offer your hands to the sun god. That they may be worthy of receiving the ring of the legion.”